It is often said that the US is a nightmare for poor people.
Let us compare it to other developed countries. The G7 is a good benchmark, as it is supposed to be "seven major advanced economies".
When you look at the purchasing power parity equivalised disposable household income, which Eurostat defines as "the total income of a household, after tax and other deductions, that is available for spending or saving, divided by the number of household members converted into equalised adults" for the 1st income decile (i.e. the poorest 10% of the population) in the US vs CAN, DEU, GBR, JPN, FRA and ITA, the US is ahead of the pack (except for CAN) in 2020, the latest year for which data for all countries is available.
The poor in the US earn 3-50% more than in those other countries (except for CAN). So if the US is a nightmare for poor people, ITA must be the lowest circle of hell for them.
Perhaps you might say that out of pocket healthcare spending wipes out all of this relative wealth.
Ironically, in 2022, CHE actually had 18.5% more out of pocket spending on healthcare than the US, and other countries are closer to US out of pocket healthcare spending than you'd expect: CAN (66%), DEU (62%), GBR (46%), JPN (38%), FRA (38%) (there're no figures for ITA).
Maybe you want to say that poor people in the US spend more on healthcare as a proportion of their income than average.
I was unable to find numbers for the bottom decile, but the Center for Economic Policy and Research says that for working families in the bottom quintile of family income, 22.1 percent spend 10% or more of their income on healthcare.
Let us be pessimistic and assume all households in the bottom decile spend 10% of their income on healthcare, and adjust all other nations similarly (assuming that the share their bottom decile spend on out of pocket healthcare spending has the same relationship to the US bottom decile as the average spending). For ITA I will generously assume it to be the same as FRA and JPN (which have the lowest out of pocket spending among the lot).
Even after this generous adjustment, the lowest decile in the other countries (excluding CAN) earn at best 2% more than in US (France) and at worst 47% less (ITA).
So if US is a nightmare for poor people, it is also a nightmare for poor people in DEU, GBR, JPN, FRA and ITA.
